


here's the pencil, make it work....

by blue_rocket_frost



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Canon-Typical Behavior, Inspired by Richard Siken, M/M, Oral Sex, Other: See Story Notes, Semi-Public Sex, Unsafe Sex, mentions of drug use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-04
Updated: 2019-07-04
Packaged: 2020-06-09 12:38:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19476082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blue_rocket_frost/pseuds/blue_rocket_frost
Summary: Jack is radio silent, a rattle of bones and a puddle of heart where a boy used to be, with blue eyes, a bottle of pills, your heart in his teeth.  You try to put him back together in a way that makes sense:  this is Jack with a hockey stick in his hand, this is Jack with his hand in a fist, this is Jack with his fist on your throat, this is Jack, suffering without even knowing why.





	here's the pencil, make it work....

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blithelybonny](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blithelybonny/gifts).



> Blithelybonny, I started about 30 AUs for but I am not great at AU so I started over and sort of ended up writing a AU/fusion anyway? This is kind of experimental and a big departure from my normal so I'm sort of nervous about it but I hope you like it? 
> 
> I have to warn for canon typical stuff: Jack’s OD, talk of suicide (not graphic), suicidal ideation, sex, and sad and violent imagery, and romanticized and dramatized sadness. There's also mentions of homophobia but it's mentioned less than it is in canon, I think. We also have implied unsafe sex. I can't think of any other warnings, but if you come across anything, please let me know and I'll tag for it/mention it. 
> 
> Chapter titles taken from Richard Siken poems and are listed in the end note. (This is basically a Richard Siken fusion fic.)

**2008. _  
you're in a car with a beautiful boy and you’re trying not to tell him that you love him_**

A late night party slides to an early morning practice. You’re in the backseat of his car and your heart is so full you don’t know what to do with your hands. The pink sunrise sings to you, the pink sunrise sings you a lullaby: this is the end of the world as you know it, darling. 

But your mouths are so close together and you can see your breath: a cloud cover, a puff of smoke. 

When the boy pulls you against his mouth you wish he would keep pulling. You want him to crawl inside of you and take root. You wish this would count for something. 

**2009. _  
i swallow your heart but you make me spit it up again_**

There’s no blood in the bathroom, but then there’s Jack’s ghost. A crooked smile, a bottle of pills. Little stories we tell ourselves because believing them is easier than accepting our role in the story. “Don’t you want to come over? I’ll hold you down the way you like. I’m just excited to see you, my hands aren’t shaking.” 

You’re sorry for the shouting matches, the red solo cups, the way you said you could drown in his eyes. “I could die in them,” you said, “you could bury me there. You could keep a piece of me with you forever.” 

There’s no blood in the bathroom, but then there’s Jack’s ghost. There’s no blood in the bathroom, but you can’t wash it off your hands.

**2010. _  
i don’t blame you for being dead but you can’t have you sweater back_**

Jack is radio silent, a rattle of bones and a puddle of heart where a boy used to be, with blue eyes, a bottle of pills, your heart in his teeth. You try to put him back together in a way that makes sense: this is Jack with a hockey stick in his hand, this is Jack with his hand in a fist, this is Jack with his fist on your throat, this is Jack, suffering without even knowing why. 

You think about the time at the lake, when you fell in and thought you were drowning, the soft bliss, the light coming through the water, the way your chest wanted to burst when the air finally hit your lungs. “I’m glad I went first,” you tell your ceiling fan. “I deserve it.” 

Jack is a string of unanswered e-mails, an unanswered text-message thread. It’s a story you want nothing to do with.

**2011. _  
someone once told me explaining was an admission of failure._**

Montreal. An all night diner. Jack is beautiful the way birds are beautiful when their wings are moving. You try telling him your side of things but the words keep drying up in your throat. He tries telling you his side of things but he just keeps telling you his plans. “I’m coaching a peewee team. I’m going to college.”

He holds his eyes to the back of your head like a handgun, and you have never been able to resist skinny jeans, dirty knees, a bathroom floor. The taste of him in your mouth like gasoline when it’s all you need for a getaway car. You want to tell him you love him but you don’t know if a dead boy knows how to love, so you let him climb inside you.

He has hope in one hand, your heart in the other. He drops your heart to grab your throat. You think about the continents, and how they used to be all mashed together, if it hurt when they drifted apart. 

**2012. _  
i try, i do. i try and i try._**

Remember when you were a kid and you used to hold a Dixie Cup over your head? And all of your friends would come drink from it? You are trying not to cry because you’re afraid if you do everyone will know your weakness: it’s not having it taken away that’s going to kill you, it’s how much you’ve always wanted it.

Lion-heart, sparrow love, what are you going to do about it? Will you jump into the river, heaving your arms wide open? You’ve got the room for it, but what will you do with your hands? 

**2013:  
_i say “i want you inside me” and you split me open with a knife_** /p>

The bare bulb in the hallway swings like a sermon, sweet chariot, swings like an interrogation. Jack leaves you there, waiting. Maybe to see if you’ll take the knife you your guts and spill the rest of them, or maybe to see if you’ll follow him, like you’ve always done. You follow, of course you do. 

It’s dark in his bedroom. The window through the curtain, the light from under the doorway. His eyes, two coals burning, searching out the spot on your thin skin he can get his nails in and pull you apart. “What do you want?” he asks. 

“I just wanted to see you.” Your lies and your eyes are fluorescent in the dark. 

“What do you want,” he asks again. He puts his palm on the side of your neck, in the tender spot, where your blood lives.

“I want you to come inside me.”

You fuck on the floor because Jack’s afraid the bed will squeak. You fuck on the floor because you can take the carpet burn back to Vegas. You can’t take Jack’s hands.

**2014: _  
i wanted to hurt you but the truth is i could not stomach it_**

It’s the kind of scene you call a car for, because you already know how it’s ending before you get there. How would you say this went for you, darling? Are you proud of it? A party crashed, a shouting match, pants unzipped against another of Jack’s walls? 

You know he made his choice before you got there, didn’t you? He made his choice before he stopped answering your calls. Now he’s not going to call you back anymore, and what did you risk it for, nothing? A haughty look and a half-finished handjob? Someone’s going to pay for this, and it’s going to be you, with dividends. 

You pay for the mirror you broke in the hotel bathroom, but who’s going to pay for your heart? 

**2015. _  
your name like two x’s like punched-in eyes_**

You want to write Jack a letter, but you don’t know what you would say in it: 

_Dear Zimms,_

_I’m sorry for the things I said. I wasn’t saying them to you. I was saying them to myself, to the part of you that lives in me that I can’t clean away, no matter how many times I wash myself in the river._

_I didn’t mean it, it’s nothing personal. This is just my role, I’ve accepted it. I have to be the monster, or you won’t have anything to fight against, a reason to keep winning._

But you don’t write the letter. There’s no reason to write the letter. He wouldn’t read it. He would just keep on going like he doesn’t need you, like he doesn’t see you, like your name tastes like ash in his mouth. 

**2016.  
_you still get to be the hero_**

So that’s how the story goes, if it lets itself, depending on who’s writing it: Jack gets to slay the dragon and win a prize. The dragon is his hockey. The dragon is you. The dragon is his father. The dragon is everything that ruined him and made him sad. 

But maybe you’re the treasure, the secret in the pictures hidden in the shoebox beneath the floorboards in the cabin out by the lake. The pictures. You remember when you took them, don’t you? The overexposed Polaroids with the writing around the edges? The ones where you’re in love with a boy so you put your mouth against the boy’s mouth, and never within the galaxies of your terrified eyes could you ever imagine him being so brave.

**2017. _  
and you know that a boy who loves boys is a dead boy, unless he keeps his mouth shut_**

There’s a longer story, but it’s an even sadder story, so here’s the meat of it: the first time you kissed a boy he destroyed you, so you stop kissing boys and destroy yourself. 

**2018. _  
history repeats itself. somebody says this_**

Old friends, an All-Star Game. A late night party slides into an early morning breakfast. Your mouths are so close together and you can see your breath: a cloud cover, a puff of smoke. He kisses you because he’s heartbroken and lonely and you let him kiss you. You let him kiss you because you’re tired of denying yourself what you want. 

When ships meet in the night, it usually ends badly, but kissing Jack has always felt like drowning. 

**2019. _  
tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us_**

Hands touching hands touching the mirror in the foyer. Your face looks like a wild animal. Jack looks like something that can’t be contained, muscles moving beneath flesh that can’t hold his power. When he pushes into you all the air leaves your body, you dissolve into atoms, your hands change shape. 

Your eyes look like mercury in lava when you catch sight of them, grey in your pink face, his red mouth, white teeth tearing at your neck. His black hair a storm cloud, your black heart wide open.

There’s a place inside of you that’s flint no one else has ever been able to catch fire against. 

You look like the same beast in your reflection, your arms around his neck, his fingers between your rib bones. You are going to devour each other.

**2020. _  
i’ll be your slaughterhouse, your killing floor, your morgue and final resting_**

Sometime before summer went to the lakehouse. Jack dug up the floorboards and found the photographs, the ones of you kissing? Remember them? He put them in picture frames. You look braver than you remember in them, clinging on to each other so tightly you brought blood. 

“Look at us back then,” he says, and touches the glass with his finger, “have we always been this gone for each other?” 

You want him to lie so close that he’s inside you, so that your edges fit together, like you could be one person. Some things aren’t perfect, just beautiful: Pangea reunited.

**Author's Note:**

> These are all from [Crush](https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/crush-richard-siken/1100525397?st=SEM&sid=BNB_DSA&sourceId=SEMGoNBR&dpid=tdtve346c&2sid=Google_c&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI167g_Oub4wIV18DICh0zIwHLEAMYAyAAEgLmKvD_BwE), which was published in 2008 and written by Richard Siken. Title from "A Litany In Which Certain Things are Crossed Out".
> 
> 2008\. You Are Jeff  
> 2009\. Dirty Valentine  
> 2010\. Straw House, Straw Dog  
> 2011\. Little Beast  
> 2012\. Saying Your Names  
> 2013\. Wishbone  
> 2014\. Snow and Dirty Rain  
> 2015\. Saying Your Names  
> 2016\. Litany In Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out  
> 2017\. A Primer For the Small Weird Loves  
> 2018\. Little Beast  
> 2019\. Schedeheradze  
> 2020\. Wishbone


End file.
